From the archive, 24 March 1958: 117,000 votes, but no seat for the Liberals

Mr Jo Grimond, leader of the Liberal party, said on Saturday that it was grossly undemocratic to exclude Liberals from a reasonable share of parliamentary seats. In twelve by-elections Liberals had scored 117,000 votes and got no seats while Labour had polled 174,000 votes for five seats and the Tories 156,000 votes for seven seats.

Mr Grimond, who was addressing a rally of the National League of Young Liberals in London, said these figures showed the overwhelming case for electoral reform. "You can't laugh or frown away one-fifth of the voters. These people have shown up and down the country for more than a year that they won't vote Tory or Labour: they want to be represented by a Liberal."

What the country needed in the next fifty years was a non-Socialist, progressive party with a clear idea of the sort of society it wanted to create. This need was at the back of the new Liberal vote. "The swing towards Liberalism is coming from the people themselves. It is not an artificial creation of a party machine."

Mr Grimond said it would be absurd for a party with so few members in the Commons to draw up a detailed short-term policy for everything. Instead, they put before the electorate the three things most needed in politics to-day:

1. The outline of a Liberal society, with a positive freedom to take part in politics, in local affairs, in all sorts of voluntary bodies. Liberals in the past had sometimes been too negative when they spoke of freedom.

2. They wanted the organisation of central and local government radically reformed to make it better equipped for its job and to give more people a chance of taking part in it.

3. They wanted to see an equalitarian society in which there was wide freedom of choice, in which property and power was widely spread. Above all, they wanted an international society in which the brotherhood of man could become a reality.

Turning to current issues. Mr Grimond said that the Liberals were opposed to Labour proposals for the nationalisation of the steel and machine-tool industries. The Liberals were against the plans for more State control and higher taxation.

A Liberal programme would consist of many projects. Mr Grimond mentioned three major points: partnership in industry encouraged by taxation reform and amendment of the company law, repeal of the stamp duty and assistance in the wide dispersal of equity shares; reduction of taxation by savings on nuclear weapons and on administration; and partnership in foreign affairs.

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